Do liberals and conservatives react differently to disinformation? How many political conversations are actually happening online? Does disinformation provided by a bot have different effects on us than disinformation provided by a real person? What is being online actually, you know, doing to us?<\/p>\n
A report released this week by the philanthropic\u00a0Hewlett Foundation<\/a>, \u201cSocial media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature<\/a>,\u201d aims to lay out what we do and don\u2019t know about the relationship between those topics. The report is especially useful as a sort of catalog of the questions we still have; it also flags where existing research is in conflict.<\/p>\n The report, which includes research reviews written by several different academics who specialize in specific areas (lead author\u00a0Joshua A. Tucker<\/a>,\u00a0Andrew Guess<\/a>,\u00a0Pablo Barber\u00e1<\/a>,\u00a0Cristian Vaccari<\/a>,\u00a0Alexandra Siegel<\/a>,\u00a0Sergey Sanovich<\/a>,\u00a0Denis Stukal<\/a>, and\u00a0Brendan Nyhan<\/a>), begins with a chart of all the \u201cmoving pieces.\u201d The authors deliberately decided not to link social media use to quality of democracy; social media is neither inherently democratic or undemocratic, they write, \u201cbut simply an arena in which political actors \u2014 some which may be democratic and some which may be anti-democratic \u2014 can contest for power and influence.\u201d (In 2010, the Journal of Democracy featured an article about social media entitled \u201cLiberation technology<\/a>.\u201d By 2017, the same journal was running \u201cCan democracy survive the Internet?<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n So. Here are some of the things we don\u2019t know, some of which kind of overlap with\u00a0other things we don\u2019t know<\/a>.<\/p>\n Forget just \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201cdisinformation\u201d (though we need common definitions for those, too): There\u2019s not even consensus, across scholars, on what an \u201conline political conversation\u201d or an \u201cecho chamber\u201d actually is. Lots of research has tried to focus on the amount of disagreement that people are exposed to online, but we don\u2019t have a standard definition for what kind of conversation counts as \u201cpolitical,\u201d what counts as disagreement, or even for what counts as a conversation in the first place (for instance, what if one side of it is a bot?) And then there\u2019s echo chamber: \u201cTo date, not only is there no consensus on what level of selective exposure constitutes an \u2018echo chamber,\u2019 there is not even any consensus on what metric or summary statistic should be used to measure this selective exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n Do liberals and conservatives see different amounts of disinformation online, for instance? What about people who are on social media a lot? We need to know more about how different people react to the same things; the authors suggest we could start by studying \u201cwhether extremists tend to react differently than moderates,\u201d or whether conservatives react differently than liberals. \u201cIf either disinformation or political polarization affect conservatives and liberals differently, then this type of research would seem to be particularly important moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Some researchers have found a \u201cbacklash or boomerang\u201d effect, where people dig their heels in even more strongly on their original position when they\u2019re exposed to information that contradicts it. But if this is actually happening (and some researchers think it isn\u2019t), it\u2019s unclear how much of it is simply \u201cpartisan cheerleading\u201d versus legitimate belief.<\/p>\n Various studies about the \u201cextent to which disinformation shared on social media has any effect on citizens\u2019 political beliefs,\u201d or whether it increases polarization, have conflicting findings, partly because the studies use different definitions of what misinformation and polarization are. \u201cSometimes the differences between rumors, false information, misleading information, and hyperpartisan information are blurry.\u201d Plus, it\u2019s not just about who you vote for: We need more research into how exposure to disinformation affects people\u2019s viewpoints on various issues, their overall interest in politics, and their trust in institutions.<\/p>\n Most social media research focuses on Twitter; as Jonathan Albright\u00a0recently pointed out<\/a>, Twitter\u2019s not where the most people are. Facebook is, but we don\u2019t have a lot of research on how Facebook use affects politics. (Facebook makes itself hard to study!) The report also calls for more analysis of Google search results. And then there\u2019s traditional media: How does it interact with social media? How much are \u201cpolitical rumors from social media\u201d migrating into traditional media stories? What are the social media strategies of hyperpartisan media outlets?<\/p>\n The two-party political system in the U.S. is unusual. It\u2019s also still unclear how \u201cdigital media can contribute to polarization and disinformation in more unstable, hybrid regimes and non-democratic regimes.\u201d<\/p>\n The full report, which contains many more things we don\u2019t know (and some we do!) is\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Main image CC-licensed by\u00a0Pixabay\u00a0<\/a>via\u00a0TeroVesalainen<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n This\u00a0article\u00a0<\/a>was originally published on\u00a0Nieman Lab<\/a>. It was edited and republished on IJNet with permission. It was published on AMDF with permission from IJNET<\/em>What\u2019s an \u201conline political conversation\u201d? What\u2019s an \u201cecho chamber\u201d?<\/h4>\n
Are different online groups exposed to different levels of disinformation? And are their reactions to it different?<\/h4>\n
How do individuals react when they\u2019re exposed to disinformation?<\/h4>\n
Studies are usually about one platform, but lots of people are on multiple platforms (including offline media).<\/h4>\n
How much does U.S.-based research apply to the rest of the world?<\/h4>\n